


Lacuna

by biichan



Category: Doctor Who, Yakitate!! Japan
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Community: lgbtfest, Crossover, Crossover (Second Chapter Only), Episode Tag, M/M, Series 6B, You don't actually have to know anything about Yakitate!! Japan to read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-29
Updated: 2010-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biichan/pseuds/biichan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An empty space or a missing part; a gap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lacuna I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes are reunited and misunderstandings occur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks for Lurky and the Evil Midnight Lurker for beta-reading.

Ten years or more had passed while Jamie slept. He wasn't sure of the exact amount, but it must have been a long one, for the glass in the room showed himself to be not the callow youth he remembered himself to be but a man full-grown.

Like the fiddler, Jamie thought, the one in the old Orcanian soldier's story. One night after having had too much to drink the fiddler had gone to make merry with the trolls who lived in Stone Howe and when he'd come home the next morning fifty years had passed.

He looked to the man standing in the doorway. The robes were different, but fair hair and tall frame remained the same. "You're one of those Lords of Time," Jamie said, "aren't you? One of the ones that put the Doctor on trial and sent me back to Culloden. You made me think I'd never left in the first place, didn't you? And that Redcoat gave me a good knocking about the head and the next thing I knew I was bound in chains for the New World. And you were there in the New World, there with gold, and the last thing I remember is being pushed into your little boat. But it wasn't a little boat, was it?"

The man—if man he was—said nothing.

"You must have brought me here for a reason," Jamie asked angrily. "What do you _want_ with me?"

"He brought you here," the oh-so-heartbreakingly familiar voice said, "for me."

"Doctor!" Jamie shouted, as his dearest friend stepped from behind Jamie's captor. His hair was grayer than Jamie remembered. No matter. It was him. It was the Doctor.

"_Jamie_," said the Doctor, taking Jamie's hand into his own and clasping it tightly. "You have no idea how much I've missed you."

"I've missed you too, Doctor," said Jamie, awkwardly. There was something about the look in the Doctor's eye that bothered him. It wasn't as he remembered him.

The was a polite cough. Their—gaoler? employer? Jamie wasn't sure—beckoned to them. "You will come with me," he said. "I need to brief you for your mission."

* * *

What had happened, as far as Jamie could tell, was this: after sending himself and Zoe back to where they'd once belonged—and without any of their memories of traveling aboard the TARDIS—the three Time Lords (not Lairds, they were too English for that) had pronounced sentence on the Doctor and begun to enact it. And then...

They'd stopped. One of them—the one that had been there when Jamie had awoken—worked for something called the Celestial Intervention Agency and this Agency _wanted_ the Doctor. Specifically, they wanted the Doctor to go on dangerous missions for them. In return for him risking life and limb for them time and again, they'd keep him from his decreed fate. Just as long as the Doctor kept working for them.

And he'd done a lot of work for them over the years. Lots of very difficult and tricky work and that, Jamie was informed, was why he was here. The Doctor had been asking for an assistant for decades and the Time Lords were finally giving in to that request by letting him have Jamie, who didn't seem to be having much of an effect on history in any case. They'd even arranged to return Jamie his memories, explained the Agency Time Lord (whom the Doctor referred to as "Goth"), in order to make him more useful to the Doctor.

And they intended for Jamie to be useful _immediately_.

* * *

"You remember Dastari, Doctor," Goth said. "Don't you?"

"Oh yes," said the Doctor, shooting another one of those mysterious, worrying glances at Jamie. "Yes, of course. Will I be expected to enlist his aid again for this next mission?"

"Your next mission," Goth said, and there was a sort of smug pleasure coloring his until-then quite neutral voice, "will be to stop him. He's begun experimenting with Time Travel."

"Oh dear," said the Doctor, frowning.

"Yes," said Goth. "I hope your human is as useful as you think."

Jamie waited until the Time Lord had left the room before making a face. "Who shoved a stick up his arse?"

The Doctor chuckled. "It _is_ a big one, isn't it?" He shook his head. "Unfortunately, you could say the same thing about most of my people."

Jamie frowned. "You're nothing like him."

"Oh, I was once," said the Doctor quietly. "A—very—long time ago. Or perhaps not as long as all that. Leaving here changed me."

Jamie nodded slowly. Leaving Scotland had changed _him_.

"Let's go," said the Doctor suddenly. "The TARDIS is in the docking bay and if we're very clever we can sneak in a little visit to an old friend before arriving at the space station. How would you like to see Victoria again, Jamie?"

* * *

Seeing Victoria again—spending the afternoon talking in her London flat and then taking a short hop in time and space to deliver her to her evening graphology lesson—was wonderful. It almost made up for everything that happened afterward.

At least, that was what he'd tried to tell himself during those agonizing hours of hiding on the space station, but he was lying and he knew it. No matter how much he'd loved Victoria once—and he remembered very well being in love with her, even if he couldn't quite recall why it had never become something more than friendship between them—seeing her again had _not_ been worth seeing his dearest friend tortured and put to the death. He wondered if the Time Lords knew that they had visited her and this was their punishment. It was a relief when the delirium took him.

Even more of a relief, however, to find that the Doctor was still alive, no matter how strange the shape.

He'd miss Peri, he thought, and the Other Doctor. It was odd how like and unlike the loud blond man was to his own Doctor. Jamie didn't quite understand this business of changing appearances that the Doctor and his people went in for, but it did seem quite clear to him that it _was_ only the appearance of the man that changed. The soul of the Doctor—what made him _him_—was the same as far as Jamie was concerned.

That didn't mean, however, that he wasn't grateful to finally have the Doctor back in a more familiar packaging.

* * *

The TARDIS began moving quite of its own accord as soon as the doors shut. Startled, Jamie grabbed hold of the Doctor. The Doctor responded by patting his back. "Don't worry, Jamie," he said quietly. "We're not under attack. We've completed our mission, so the Time Lords are bringing us back."

Jamie frowned. "How do they _know_?"

"By monitoring the timeline, I expect," said the Doctor. "Don't worry. You'll get used to it. Eventually."

Jamie relaxed his grip. "If you're sure..." he said doubtfully.

"I'm quite sure," the Doctor said firmly.

Jamie sighed softly and let go of him. "I don't think I like your people very much."

"Oddly enough," said the Doctor, "neither do I." He eyed Jamie thoughtfully. "Would you like me to fix us some cocoa from the food machine?"

After a moment, Jamie nodded. It would calm his nerves.

* * *

The cocoa was just how he remembered it to taste: warm and rich and sweet. Jamie's first instinct was to drink greedily but he made himself sip slowly, so that he could savor the taste. Better to concentrate on the cocoa than to pay too much attention on the Doctor: he had that _look_ in his eyes again.

The Doctor chuckled. "If you were an Aztec, I'd have just proposed marriage to you."

Jamie choked on his cocoa—the Doctor had to pound his back. "You just _what_?" he sputtered, staring at the Doctor as if the older man had just said something about how he enjoyed fornication with his mother.

"It's their custom," said the Doctor, handing Jamie a handkerchief to clean himself with. "Fixing your beloved a cup is a signal you wish to marry her. I, ah, found that out the hard way. "

"Did you marry her?" Jamie asked hesitantly. He wasn't sure why, but for some reason he felt as if that _mattered_.

"No," said the Doctor softly. "In the end I left her. But sometimes, still, I wonder what might have been."

Jamie laid his hand on the Doctor's arm. "Doctor," he said quietly, "I think we all wonder that."

* * *

"Ah," the Doctor said, as the TARDIS finally stopped wheezing around them. "We're here. Goth should be 'round with our next assignment sooner or later. It shouldn't be more than a couple of days, if we're lucky."

Jamie stared at him. "A couple of _days_?"

The Doctor shrugged. "On average, yes. That's not really all that long to a Time Lord."

"Well, I'm a Scotsman," said Jamie, "and that sounds more than long enough to _me_. What are we supposed to be _doing_ 'til then?"

"Oh, I can think of a few things," the Doctor murmured.

Then he kissed Jamie.

It was nothing at all like a brotherly kiss. There was a heat to it, a heat that Jamie found himself responding to with mounting dread and he could feel the Doctor's own response, hard against his leg. It was as if the Doctor planned to devour him. Jamie had never wanted something so much, nor feared it.

Fear won. He tore himself away from the Doctor. "It's the Androgum," Jamie whispered, more to himself than to the Doctor. "It's still in you." He swallowed hard, shivering despite himself. Then, in a louder voice, "I'll kill you before I let you eat me."

The Doctor's expression was honestly confused. "Jamie, what are you talking about? This isn't anything we haven't... oh. Oh, I see. How very... clever of them."

He touched the panel that opened the TARDIS doors. "Do forgive me, Jamie. I'll be back soon. I just need to have a talk with our friend Goth."

Once the Doctor was out of sight, Jamie let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding in. Goth, then? Well, better him than Jamie. The smug, pompous prig wouldn't even see it coming. And after all, it was his fault that they'd gone on the mission and the Doctor had been infected.

Jamie frowned. No, he thought. Not even Goth deserved _that_.

He touched his hand to his belt. The knife was still there. Good.

Gathering his courage, Jamie ran off after the Doctor.

* * *

It wasn't difficult to find the Doctor. All Jamie had to do was follow the shouting.

He crept up to the doorway, then peered around it into the high-ceilinged chamber where Goth had first briefed them on their mission. The Doctor hadn't attacked Goth yet. Good. Jamie had no doubt it would be soon. The Doctor was nearly shaking with rage and unrestrained fury.

"How _dare_ you," the Doctor was saying, his voice an unrecognizable snarl. "I knew the Agency was corrupt and perverted, but this—"

"Corrupt? Perverted?" Goth laughed scornfully. "You told the Agency you wanted the human boy as an assistant. Ten years ago we decided to grant you that request. Imagine our surprise to find that the only thing you wanted him for was unrestrained fornication. How dare us? No, how dare _you_. You oughtn't be surprised that the Agency took a dim view of your perversions. Did you really think we'd let you carry on in that fashion with your primitive? I'm surprised you haven't turned to coupling with non-sapients. There's really not much lower for you to fall."

"How much," the Doctor said, so quietly that Jamie had to strain to hear him. "How much did you make him forget?"

"Everything," said Goth, and there was a note of triumph in his voice. "Everything we possibly could, without damaging the boy irreparably. We left in a few comforting touches and there was simply nothing we could do for your incessant clinging to each other, but every single kiss has been eradicated, every tender word reduced to component atoms, each and every caress burned to ashes. It took us ten years to do it and by the end of it our specialist had been driven criminally insane by his disgust, but we did it, Doctor. Payment in full for your attempt to deceive us."

Jamie drew back further into the corridor. He'd heard enough.

* * *

He was still there, sitting on the floor, legs tucked against his chest, when the Doctor emerged.

"You heard us, then." He sounded resigned to the idea.

"I heard enough," said Jamie. He swallowed, hard. "We were buggering each other. We were buggering each other for I don't know how long, because I can't remember it, but it must have been when Zoe was there. Maybe even with Victoria there."

The Doctor crouched down, so that his face was level with Jamie's. "We cared about each other very much," he said in a low, quiet voice. "It wasn't as sordid as he made it sound."

"If you say so," said Jamie dubiously. He wanted to believe the Doctor, but the Doctor had lied to him before. He still remembered _that_.

The Doctor sighed. "I'll understand if you don't want to stay here," he said. "I'll take you back home to Earth if you want. It doesn't have to be to your own time. I'm sure Ben and Polly and Victoria would love to see you again."

Jamie shook his head. "Not on your life," he said fiercely. "Who's going to keep you out of trouble if I'm not around?"

"I seem to recall you getting me into nearly as much trouble as you kept me out of," the Doctor said in a wry voice, but he was smiling.

"Doesn't matter," Jamie said firmly. "I'm not leaving you alone with naught but vipers like Goth to keep you company." He frowned. "I don't understand why you still work for them. Whatever they were going to do with you before, it can't be as bad as all this."

"It's not so bad," said the Doctor quietly, "not really. At least not with you to keep me company. And despite the Agency's faults, I've done a lot of good work for them." Jamie wondered which one of them the Doctor was trying to convince. "Anyhow," the Doctor muttered to himself, "at least I'm still _me_, not that puffed-up popinjay with a terminal case of dandyism."

Jamie blinked. "I don't understand."

The Doctor sighed softly. "I'll explain later, Jamie."

He stood, then offered Jamie his hand. Jamie took it.

"I do care for you," Jamie said softly. "As much as I would a brother or more. You're dear to me. They couldn't make me forget that." And they couldn't change it either, he told himself firmly. Even if the knowledge of what he and the Doctor had been doing together still frightened him.

The Doctor smiled. "I'm glad."

"You're making me cocoa when we get back to the TARDIS, though," Jamie said.

The Doctor burst out laughing. And Jamie thought, hearing the Doctor laugh and seeing him smile, that perhaps just a tiny bit of the last few days had been worth it after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lacuna I was originally written for the LGBTFest. Prompt: _Prompt 76. Any fandom, any characters, Established couple. One member gets amnesia and forgets their own sexual awakening; now they are confused and downright terrified to find themselves in a gay relationship. How does each partner deal?_ I might have gone slightly off-track to the letter of the prompt, but I hope I honored the spirit.


	2. Lacuna II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which after a long struggle there is finally something at least resembling a happy ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to nonelvis for beta-reading the second half of this fic and to kindkit, for wanting the sequel enough to get me to finish it.
> 
> (There is a slight crossover with the anime and manga _Yakitate!! Japan_ in this part, but it's mostly in the background details of Two and Jamie's mission and the parts that actually have to do with the story are explained therein.)

_He was in the large room with the TARDIS and the SIDRATs. The Doctor was with him. They were walking together, side by side._

_"Another mission, then?" Jamie heard himself say. The voice wasn't his voice. He caught a brief glimpse of himself in the glass of a window and was startled to see the reflection of a man well into middle age: greying black hair and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache._

_"Unfortunately," the Doctor answered, his expression ironic. "The down time between them seems to get shorter and shorter with every little errand I complete. I do believe our friend Goth disapproves of the way I conduct myself between them."_

_"More likely he disapproves of how you distract me from my own work," the man who was not Jamie pointed out._

_"Mmm, well, you _are_ the most highly regarded mental specialist the CIA possesses," the Doctor agreed. "I suppose they _would_ take offense at the amount of time you seem to be spending in the company of a highly notorious criminal. Even if he _is_ your boyhood chum."_

_Not-Jamie chuckled. "Among other things."_

_"Well, yes," said the Doctor. They'd stopped walking now—they'd reached the TARDIS. The Doctor leaned up against the door. "I don't suppose I could persuade you to come along," he said, his voice wistful. "It's only that I get lonely, now, without Susan or any of the humans along."_

_"I'm sorry," Not-Jamie said, quietly. "But with the project so near to completion, I don't think they'd be happy if I abandoned it now, however temporarily that might be."_

_"No, I suppose not," the Doctor said, making a face. "Can't trust the classified work to any lesser agent, no matter if it ties him up for nearly a decade! Still, I do hope that once it's done we'll be able to work together again."_

_Not-Jamie smiled. "I would enjoy that."_

_"Thought you would," the Doctor said, with a sly look in his eyes. "Kiss me for good luck?"_

_"Of course."_

_It was strange kissing the Doctor again, if only in a dream. Jamie's first instinct was to fight it, like he had before, but the man whose body he was inhabiting had an entirely different reaction, pressing himself even closer to the Doctor. And Jamie found himself _glad_ that he couldn't control what was happening in this dream, because after the first long fearful moment Jamie found himself enjoying kissing the Doctor. Or enjoying feeling another man kiss the Doctor. It was all so very confusing and he found himself wishing Zoe was there, because she'd be able to sort this out._

_The was something immensely satisfying, though, about the cat-having-stolen-the-cream look of the recently kissed Doctor. It made Jamie want, ever so slightly, to kiss the Doctor himself._

_"Doctor..." The man who was not Jamie sounded hesitant and Jamie could hear his hearts—_hearts!_—beating loudly in his ears. "You didn't have relations with the humans you kept, did you?"_

_The Doctor's expression didn't change, except for his eyes. "Don't be silly. Of course I didn't."_

_As the TARDIS faded away, the man who was not Jamie clenched his fist._

_"Liar."_

***

Jamie awoke with a start. For one long, terrible moment he didn't know where he was, thought that he was still in the gaol after Culloden or on Dastari's ship, but then his eyes adjusted and he realized that he was sitting on the chair in the TARDIS console room, half-finished mug of cocoa grown cold on the floor next to him. Someone had covered his sleeping form with a blanket.

It all felt horribly, terribly familiar. Worse, he couldn't quite remember why.

It had been a strange dream, like no other dream Jamie could remember having. No uncanny beasties chasing him. No terrible white horses with horns on their foreheads. His father, bleeding from the hole the musket ball had torn in his chest, moaning that Jamie had killed him, even though Jamie hadn't _been_ there when—

_No_. He wasn't going to think about that. The Doctor had made _that_ dream go away after the telling of it...except Jamie couldn't remember what had happened after he'd told him. Another thing stolen.

If they could take away memories, why couldn't they take away dreams?

It had been a strange dream. Uncanny. More like a memory than a dream, though if it had been a memory it couldn't have been his own.

Jamie shivered.

The TARDIS doors were slightly ajar.

He wondered where the Doctor was.

Maybe he ought to look for him.

***

It wasn't so easy, this time, to find the Doctor. There was no shouting to listen for. So many of the corridors looked the same. Time passed strangely. Jamie didn't know if he'd been searching for five minutes or five hours.

He found him, finally, in a chamber very like the one that he'd found the Doctor and Goth in some hours earlier. It was the fourth such room he'd looked in. There was a woman with the Doctor: she looked to be older than Jamie, but a little younger than the Doctor was. But if she was another Lord of Time—Time Lady?—she might be any age at all. She had dark skin, like an African—did the Doctor's planet have an Africa?—and a great halo of hair that prevented Jamie from seeing her face very well.

Listening at doors was starting to become a bad habit for Jamie. If Victoria were here she'd scold him.

"I don't see why you're so surprised," said the Time Lady. "Considering what you were doing with that primitive—"

"Does _everyone_ on Gallifrey know about that?"

"No. But he needed someone to talk to about it—"

"He could have said something to me!"

"Oh, right. What was he supposed to say, 'My dear Doctor, I've spent the last decade erasing records of your unlawful carnal knowledge from this half-clothed primitive and it has not been at all beneficial to my own psychological well-being?' The one time he tried to do it, you _lied_ to him."

The Doctor started to say something, but the Time Lady cut him off.

"You _knew_ he was unstable. That the only things keeping him functional were his work for the Agency and _you_. _**You took those away from him.**_ You left Gallifrey and it was hard going at first, but he had his work. And then they bring you back. He starts getting better for the first time in decades. But oh no, you can't live without your catamite, so you beg and plead until the Agency gives you back the human _just to shut you up_. And then he didn't have his work anymore, because editing your human was his work. _**And you kept on lying to him**_." She laughed coldly. "Frankly, Doctor, you deserve whatever you get."

The Doctor said nothing at first, just stared blankly ahead. Jamie... didn't know if he wanted to drape a blanket over the Doctor's shoulders and hand him a mug of cocoa or if he wanted to punch him in the jaw.

"Jamie," the Doctor said finally. "How long have you been listening at doors?"

Jamie felt his cheek burn. "I woke up. You weren't there."

The Time Lady raised an elegant eyebrow. "Well," she said in tones dripping sarcasm. "Don't let me keep you from it."

Once she was gone, the Doctor sighed. "I'm sorry you had to hear that."

Jamie shrugged. "Aye, well, perhaps you should have thought of that before you begged and pleaded so. Especially since you didn't even get what you wanted."

Immediately after he said that, Jamie wished he hadn't. The look on the Doctor's face... Jamie didn't think he'd seen anything so miserable in his life.

"I didn't mean it," Jamie said, quietly. He looked down at his feet.

The Doctor's hand touched Jamie's shoulder for only the briefest of moments; Jamie wasn't sure if he'd imagined it. "I know, Jamie," he said tiredly. "I know."

***

Goth was there when they got back to the TARDIS. He wasted no time in briefing them in their next assignment.

It took the better part of an hour before Jamie realized that Goth wasn't actually joking.

***

"Bread," Jamie muttered under his breath. "He sent us to watch a bunch of bampots baking bread."

"He sent us to the Monaco Cup," the Doctor corrected. "These aren't just _any_ bampots baking bread. This is the Grand Prix of bread-baking. I've always wanted to see one."

Jamie rolled his eyes. "Aye, and the wee clown? What about him? What's he for?"

"That clown," said the Doctor, "happens to be Pierrot Bolneze, the Crown Prince of Monaco. He was kidnapped as a baby and raised in the circus after being abandoned by the people who kidnapped him. He spent most of his life training to be a world-class clown in hopes that his parents would someday be in the audience and recognize him." The Doctor sighed. "It didn't quite work out that way."

"Aye, I understand," said Jamie, who didn't actually, "but what's he _here_ for?"

"Oh, that," said the Doctor. "He's the judge. I understand he's supposed to be quite good."

Jamie shook his head and got the wee little game machine the Doctor had given him from out of his sporran. The Doctor could watch a clown eat bread if he wanted to. Jamie had pocket-monsters to catch.

***

He'd almost got the one that looked like a shelled water-horse into his wee ball, when Jamie noticed that the room had become much less crowded. He looked up at the Doctor. "Where'd everyone go?"

The Doctor ignored him in favor of staring at the center of the room. "Of course," the Doctor muttered under his breath. "The prince somehow changed the past as a reaction to the donut the Japanese team made for him. It was a cannabis donut. The Japanese word for cannabis is _taima_."

"A time dounut?" Jamie wrinkled his nose. "That's the daftest thing I've ever heard in my life."

"Which probably means it's true," said the Doctor cheerfully. "By this point in human history, some very special humans have evolved with a sense of taste is so keen that the experience of eating gourmet food will prompt strange and elaborately inventive reactions in them, quite often based on puns. Such people were highly prized as food judges. The crown prince is obviously one of these highly sensitive individuals—and the boy who baked the _taima_ donut _is_ Azuma Kazuma, who will eventually go down in the history books as the greatest master baker in the Eastern Hemisphere. If anyone could make a donut that would prompt culinary sensitives to spontaneously travel in time, it would be him. Jamie, you stay here. I have a donut to steal."

At least there didn't seem to be any Androgums around, Jamie thought to himself as he watched the Doctor run off. No furry red eyebrows here. There were plenty of odd characters around, though: the tough-looking man with the afro, the Oriental swordsman, and what seemed to be a pyramid with legs. Somewhere along the line a great giant of a man with a lion's head mask had also shown up, along with a woman wearing a crown; they seemed to be berating the clown prince about something Jamie couldn't quite hear. A grey colored man—his skin the same color as his shaggy hair—was slinking off toward the door and—

Wait. That wasn't—but it _was_. There, on the other side of the room, standing by the door, was the man from Jamie's dream!

Jamie's game machine fell to the floor with a clatter.

The man from the dream met Jamie's eye. It was mad, but Jamie could almost _hear_ the man inside his head, calling his name. Telling Jamie to come with him.

The man from the dream turned and walked out the door. Without hesitation, Jamie ran after him.

***

Jamie finally caught up to the man outside the palace. "I _know_ you," he said, breathing hard. "You were in my dream. You were... you were friends with the Doctor."

The man studied him like he was some sort of crawling bug. "You're the human boy. Jamesrobertmcrimmon." The way he said Jamie's name was odd: he sort of slurred it together, as if it were just one word.

"Aye," said Jamie.

The man withdrew something from his pocket and held it out for Jamie. "Here."

Jamie took it. It was a bun.

"Eat it," said the man.

Jamie took a bite.

"I am the Master," said the man, "and you are my prisoner."

The world went black.

***

_They tumbled down the hill, a tangled confusion of lips and hands, before breaking apart at the bottom to stare into each other's faces. "Are you _sure_ that wasn't a sin?" Jamie asked, breathing heavily._

_"'Tisn't exactly sodomy and fornication, Jamie," said Alexander McLaren, who was a few short years older and thus a very font of wisdom and sagacity. "We aren't buggering each other. It's just a bit of friendly fun."_

_"Fun, aye," said Jamie, "but I thought you wanted me to marry Kirsty."_

_"And so you shall," said Alex. "And have a dozen bairns besides. You have my permission and 'twill not be very hard to get our father's. He likes you very much, Jamie."_

_Jamie blushed. "I'm just a piper," he mumbled._

_Alex touched his cheek. "You aren't 'just' anything."_

_"Aye, well, if I'm to marry Kirsty, should I really be rolling around in fields with her brother?"_

_"Does it matter?" his friend said. "We can be properly penitent when we're old men together."_

_"But we won't be," Jamie said quietly. The air turned cold. "We can't grow old together, Alex, you're _dead_. I saw you die. I remember it, just like I remember today. You're dead."_

_"And you're dreaming," said Alex._

_The sky broke into a thousand pieces._

***

He awoke in a dark room. Someone—the man from his dream—had laid him down on a camp bed. Jamie sat up and rubbed his eyes.

The man from his dream was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, his gloved hands steepled. The Master. That was what he'd told Jamie to call him.

"I suppose you must be wondering why you are here," the man, the Master said.

Jamie nodded. "Aye," he croaked.

"There's water on the table. I haven't poisoned it." The word _yet_ lay unspoken between them.

Jamie took a drink, then set the glass down. "Thank you." He wondered why he hadn't attacked the Master with his knife yet. But he didn't _want_ to attack the Master, even though he knew he ought to. It was downright uncanny.

"It was you," he said, finally, "wasn't it? You were the one that took my memories away. And you made me dream about you, so I'd run after you. And now you've made it so I don't want to fight you."

"Very good," said the Master. "Perhaps you aren't quite as stupid as I thought you were."

"You went mad," said Jamie.

The Master's eyes narrowed. "I merely came to the conclusion that it's useless to struggle to do the right things, when no one else is bothering to make the effort. And when it's so much easier and more pleasant to do what I want."

"Oh," said Jamie. And because it was polite, he added, "What do you want to do?"

The Master smiled grimly. "Many things. You'll see."

Jamie inched back on the camp bed. The Master laughed scornfully.

"Oh, not to you," he said. "At least not that. I'm not the Doctor. No, my plans are for bigger and better things. Have you ever wanted to see the stars blink out, one by one by one?"

"Not at all," Jamie said promptly.

"Oh," said the Master. He sounded almost disappointed.

Jamie's hands played with the fabric of the camp bed uneasily. "How did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That they'd send us here. The Time Lords, I mean. To Future Monaco."

A short bark of laughter. "I take back what I said about you not being stupid. _Think_, boy. Up until a few days ago, I was an employee in good standing with the Agency. It was the work of a moment to find out what your next assignment would be. And I knew the Doctor would take his sweet time in completing it too. Of course he'd wait until the prince had finished saving his mother's—and by extension his father's—life, before stealing the time donut. He's a sentimentalist—and the change to history was negligible at best."

"Oh," said Jamie, who was slightly relieved there'd been a reason that the Doctor had been watching a clown eat bread, even though he still thought that a time donut was the daftest thing he'd ever heard of. "I still don't understand though."

"Oh?" said the Master. "Should I use smaller words, then?"

"_No_," said Jamie. "I mean I don't understand why I'm here."

"You're here," said the Master, "because there's something I very much want to know."

Jamie swallowed, hard. "Aye?"

"Why," said the Master.

Jamie blinked. "Why what?"

The Master just glared at him and drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair.

Jamie fidgeted a bit.

"Even you aren't that stupid," the Master said in a low voice. "You _know_ what I'm asking."

"Aye," said Jamie, "maybe I might, but that doesn't mean I know the answer! I can't remember any of it. You know that—it's your fault that I can't. Ask yourself. Ask the Doctor."

"I've gone over each and every memory of yours that I possess," said the Master, "and I still don't know. And the Doctor will never tell me. He never tells anyone anything. Haven't you noticed?"

"Aye," said Jamie. "So I have."

There was a long silence. Finally, the Master said, almost conversationally, "You seduced him, you know."

Jamie stared at him. "I... you're joking."

"No," said the Master. "I'm not."

"But why would..." Then Jamie remembered his memory-dream and looked down. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"He's my friend," Jamie said simply. "The best friend I ever had in this world. You ought to understand that. He was your friend too."

It was the wrong thing to say. Faster than Jamie thought possible, the Master was on his feet and he'd shoved Jamie across the bed, into the wall, one gloved hand tight on Jamie's shoulder, the other gripping Jamie's chin, wrenching his head up so that he was staring deep into the Master's eyes.

"He was _never_ your friend, Jamesrobertmcrimmon," the Master hissed. "You—you and the girl—you were his pets. Nothing more than that. Just a pair of clever animals he had an absentminded affection for."

"No," Jamie managed to croak out. "No, you're wrong."

The Master laughed in his face. "Did you really think you were a person to him, just because he did _this_ to you?"

Then he kissed Jamie.

It wasn't a nice kiss at all. There was a bite to it. Jamie wondered how he could have ever thought the Doctor was trying to devour him with _his_ kiss—this was what being eaten alive felt like. It was an angry kiss, a hard and unyielding kiss, and Jamie wished nothing more for the Doctor to be there, for the _Doctor_ to be the one with his fingers tangled in Jamie's hair, because he didn't _want_ this, not from the Master, but it would be all right if it was the Doctor, it would be more than all right.

Jamie's knife was still in its sheath. If he were still in his right mind, he'd have pulled it out and stuck it in the Master's back, but he _couldn't_, his treacherous hands wouldn't let him, and that was the Master's fault too.

And then there was a horrible smell, like cow dung mixed with rotten eggs, and the Master slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Jamie stared at him. He could hear a whirring noise out of the corner of his ears, but he paid it no mind. He wondered if he had enough time to escape out the air duct before the Master woke up.

"Jamie," a muffled voice said and Jamie looked up. The face was covered in a gas mask that made him look like a fly, but Jamie would have known that voice anywhere, no matter how muffled.

"Doctor," he whispered.

***

He didn't really remember the most of the walk to the TARDIS. All he could think about was the Doctor's hand in his, about the Master lying unconscious on the floor.

The Master had been wrong. Jamie knew he was wrong. The Doctor was his friend. Jamie wasn't anybody's pet.

"Why?" Jamie whispered, once they were inside and the Doctor had wrapped Jamie up in a blanket and fixed him a cup of cocoa. "Why did you leave him there?"

The Doctor shrugged. "What else could I do?"

Jamie shrugged. He knew what he wanted the Doctor to have done, but he also knew it was something the Doctor wouldn't ever do. "Aren't the Time Lords angry at him?" he said finally. "He ran away from them. They don't seem to like people who do that."

"No," said the Doctor. "They don't. Forgive me, Jamie, but he was my friend, once, and I don't relish the idea of subjecting him to Gallifrey's justice."

"I don't think he's your friend anymore," Jamie said quietly.

The Doctor looked down at the mug of cocoa in his own hand. "Well. Perhaps not."

"_I'm_ your friend, though," said Jamie. "I'll always be your friend."

"Oh, Jamie," said the Doctor. "You know what he said wasn't true, don't you?"

"Aye, of course I do," said Jamie. "I'm not as daft as either of you seem to think I am. But it was what he thought was true. Because I'm just a clever animal to him and to Goth and to that other friend of yours. And so they think you must think the same thing and that's what disgusts them so much. Because I'm an animal."

"You're _not_," said the Doctor. "You're a person, just like me. Well, not just like me, but you're a _person_, Jamie, not an animal."

Jamie laughed. He didn't expect to. It just happened. "I _know_ that, Doctor."

The Doctor turned the mug 'round in his hand. "Yes. Well. I thought like them once. Not about you—never about you—but about other humans I knew once. I learned better. Perhaps, someday, they will too."

"Perhaps," Jamie said dubiously. He didn't think it would be any time soon.

The Doctor nodded, slowly.

Jamie finished his mug of cocoa, ate the little marshmallows, then set it down on the table. If he didn't do this now, he'd probably lose his nerve and he didn't want that to happen.

"Thank you," he said softly, "for rescuing me." And then he leaned over and kissed the Doctor's mouth.

The Doctor dropped his mug of cocoa. Neither of them noticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolutely nothing to do with the Time Donut has been made up by me. _Yakitate!! Japan_ is really that insane.
> 
> I hope everyone who wanted a second half to this has enjoyed Lacuna II! I won't be writing a Lacuna III, but there are two prequels to this I'm hoping to write. Hopefully I'll be able to write them in less than a year apiece.


End file.
